Spring arriving

Well, it's supposed to be spring, so why do we keep getting cold weather and forecasts of snow showers? Mother Nature must've forgotten to set her alarm!

The robins don't seem to mind too much - they are still hopping around the yard, and I hear all kinds of birdsong in the morning. It SOUNDS like spring, and if you looked outside right now, it LOOKS like spring, because the sun is shining and there's some green. It just doesn't FEEL like spring.

Well, this too shall pass, I suspect.

In panda news, Mei Xiang at the National Zoo went into estrus WAY early, like in January. They artificially inseminated her, but still no news - if she should deliver a cub, though, it would likely be the first one born this year. How cool is that?

(Oh, and if you like the bunny - I got it here: Free Animations
Get your free animations, 3D animated gifs and Web design tools at http://www.free-animations.co.uk)

How Did That Happen?

How on earth did it get to be February already? Two-thirds of the way through, at that, and I haven't posted anything since New Year's Eve. Yikes!

Well, it HAS been busy. "Prelude to a Kiss" took up a lot of my time. But that's been over for two weeks now (I think), so I shouldn't have any excuses, should I?

I'm going to take a page out of Gail's book and set this up to do my Facebook notes. Consolidation is a wonderful thing! And further, I'm finally going to do the "25 Random Things About Me" thing that my co-workers have been doing. I might be late to the party, but that doesn't mean I can't have a good time, right?

Okay, here goes:

1. I have always loved to read. Even before I actually learned to read, I would see my parents reading, especially my mother and I wanted to do it, too. My mom told me that I would learn when I went to school, and I looked forward to that day so fervently - when I came home after the first day of first grade (I didn't go to Kindergarten) I was crushed because we hadn't learned to read that first day!
2. In spite of the fact that I don't have any issues in telling people facts about myself, I am really a pretty private person. There are only a very few people in my life to whom I have ever really opened up and shared my deepest, most private thoughts and feelings.
3. My mom has been dead for almost 15 years and I still miss her every day. She was one of those to whom I referred in #2...
4. Most people think of me as a cat person, and I DO love my cats, but I grew up with dogs and really didn't like cats all that well as a kid. That was mostly because a) my dad hated cats and b) my great-aunt Mary had a cat that was old and cranky and scratched me once because I was trying to pet her. (The cat, not my Aunt.) It wasn't until I had graduated from college and moved in with my friend Terri and her cats that I discovered that I really did love cats! But if I were home more, I'd have dogs, too. I'm glad that John shares his dogs with me!
5. My obsession with giant pandas is actually a fairly recent phenomenon...within the past 4 years or so, and it grew out of my love for cats. I had been watching a litter of cheetah cubs at the National Zoo on their webcam and discovered the Pandacam by accident; they were watching Mei Xiang for a possible pregnancy at the time. A few months later Tai Shan was born...and I was hooked!
6. I love computer and video games. Once I start, I have a hard time stopping!
7. I have two entire shelves of a bookcase devoted to books by and about J.R.R. Tolkien.
8. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. My best friend was a very talented artist and we teamed up - I wrote, she illustrated. Somewhere I still have some of those stories - could be scary!
9. In addition to wanting to be a writer, in 6th grade I knew I wanted to be a teacher. But it wasn't till jr. year in high school that I decided for sure I wanted to teach music. Up to that point I couldn't decide whether I wanted to teach biology or music.
10. I learned how to play chess in the 7th grade to impress a boy. (Don't laugh; he's probably a nuclear physicist or something like that now!) That didn't last very long, but I still remember how to play chess...
11. When I was in college, my friends and I had Canasta tournaments on Saturday nights. (Yes, I was just a wild party animal.) Hmmm...I DON'T remember how to play Canasta.
12. I am easily startled, but not easily frightened.
13. I have never lived alone, but I know I wouldn't mind it at all. I actually rather enjoy being alone.
14.I started drinking coffee on a regular basis when I was about 12. It was a bonding thing with my mom.
15. I have three sisters and no brothers, but I have always wanted a brother. When I was little I usedto ask Santa for an older brother every year until I figured out the logistics of that...then I decided that a little one was better than nothing. Never got one, though, even though I offered several times to trade one of my younger sisters with a good friend for one of her brothers.
16. When I was in 4th grade my best friend went home sick from school with what we thought was a cold. That was on a Monday, I think...by Wednesday she was in the hospital; Thursday evening my mom went to visit her for me (kids weren't allowed); Friday morning my mother told me over breakfast that Claire had died. I remember that it was Friday the 13th of October and she apparently had some rare disease that no one had ever heard of before.
17. I don't walk properly. I walk toe-to-heel instead of heel-to-toe unless I'm really thinking about it.
18. My first "real" job was as a clerk-typist in an insurance company. I have also worked playing background music in a men's club (listen, it was the club my dad went to, so there was nothing shady about it), as a waitress, as a cashier/sales person in women's clothing and children's shoes, as a music teacher, as a computer lab manager, as an instructional support person. That's pretty much it...but interestingly enough, all my jobs have required working with some sort of keyboard. Too bad I never took typing!
19. The first show I was ever in was "Oklahoma!" when I was in 10th grade. Up till that point I was much too shy to audition for anything, and only did it because my best friend talked me into it. (If she'd only know what she was starting...)
20. Although I got my driver's license when I was 16, I never really drove much till I was 21. ( Of course, I didn't pass the driver's test the first time, but that's a whole story in itself.) I just didn't really have any need to drive till I moved away from home, and I didn't really like it all that well. In fact, I never really felt comfortable driving till I was about 30 - when I had to drive back and forth from Albany while I was working on my Master's degree.
21. Pet peeves: people taking up two parking spaces, leaving cabinet doors open, rude and inconsiderate behavior in general. Want to send me over the edge? Mis-shelve books...
22. I love shoes and hats, but I seldom wear hats and I only wear about three different pairs of shoes most of the time.
23. I don't mind bugs, snakes, or most rodents. Mice don't bother me, though I don't particularly care for them in the house, but there's something about rats that creep me out. I think it's the tails...I don't like possums, either, and they have the same kind of tails.
24. Up until I was about 40, I had an unreasonable fear of bridges. I couldn't drive over one without a racing heart and sweaty knuckles; I was practically paralyzed walking over one (and I had to walk over one to get to school); I had nightmares about them. I'm not sure why the fear went away, but it did...now I barely even notice if I'm going over one.
25. When I was in college I studied harp. Wish I still played...though I don't really know where I'd put one if I did!

So there you have it. Happy New Year, a month or so late, and happy February!

This & That

So I haven't been posting lately for a couple of reasons:

1) My life has been entirely consumed by the current theatre production ("Evita")
2) I've been spending time writing on Facebook instead

As to the former, there's one more show to go. Two weekends, as usual - and this time it's with a twist, as we had two different actresses playing Eva Peron. The woman who was originally cast ended up with a conflict so that we had the understudy do it the second weekend.

What's so interesting about all that is that when we did the auditions and the casting, John, the director, was very divided about which of the two he was going to cast. One of them (last weekend) was more operatic and actually kind of resembled Eva Peron (but not with blond hair). The other was much more of a Broadway type and looked more like Patti LuPone playing Eva Peron. He agonized and said, "But I want them both!" - and apparently someone in the Universe was listening and granted his wish.

So. Having said all that - we've had five good productions, and I have expanded my technology repertoire to include a semi-mastery of a very cool product called Sinfonia®. It's a system that allows you to have a full orchestra at your fingertips even when you don't have the room for the entire group! Check it out here. I had a great time using it!

Now, as for Facebook - well, let's just say that I'm up to 31 friends and I think it's very fun! I've talked to folks I haven't seen in years. And it's all because some of my colleagues created accounts there and I submitted to peer pressure and logged on, too.

:-)

In panda news...there's a new little guy at the Atlanta Zoo! Mei Lan has a little brother, and Lun Lun is just as wonderful a mother this time around.

Accidental Discoveries

Part of today's lunch table discussion encompassed "accidental discoveries" - we were puzzling about how certain things ever got discovered. Like, for example, maple syrup. Who on earth ever figured out that you could stick a spout into a tree, extract the sap, then boil it till it was this sweet substance that was good to eat? Or who would figure that poppy seeds could be a drug? That sort of thing.

So while waiting for a process to finish running, I took a look online to see what sorts of accidental discoveries there are out there. Found some interesting stuff, of course!

http://listverse.com/miscellaneous/top-10-accidental-discoveries/
Listverse in and of itself is fascinating to those of us who like lists. Of course, the "Top 10" designation is purely subjective.

Toll House cookies were discovered by accident? Really? Now THAT'S the kind of accident I wouldn't mind having.

This list leaves off a couple of really important things, like Silly Putty and Vulcanized rubber. Ice cream cones.

Some of the items weren't so much mistakes as they were simply people using the materials they had on hand to substitute for something else and found that it was simply better in some way. (See the ice cream cones example!)

There are so many examples out there, mostly in the area of science or food. It's amazing!

So, panda news. Looks like Mei Xiang isn't going to have a cub this year. The folks at the National Zoo are speculating that she actually might have lost a fetus in an early stage that was reabsorbed into the uterine lining. I guess it's not uncommon in mammals, but it still makes me sad. :-( Guess Tai Shan is still an only child!

Waterblogged

Couldn't resist, Matt. You rock at post titles!

So, water. Cool, pure, lovely (that's for Kelli) water. I love it. It's always been my drink of choice - well, except for coffee - even as a kid. (Yes, I drank coffee as a kid. I started drinking it regularly when I was twelve, but that's another whole story.) I've never really been one for flavored waters, especially those that are carbonated. Yeah, I can drink them, and I would prefer to drink that over soda, but give me a plain old glass of spring water any day.

But I generally like to try new things, and I particularly like to peruse the shelves of "Nature's Marketplace" at Wegmans. Recently in my perusals I discovered an herbal water called "Ayala's Herbal Water." Feeling adventurous, I purchased a few bottles (of different flavors) and much to my surprise, I REALLY liked them!

Now, the folks at work find these highly amusing for some reason. However, you lunch table people need to know that there ARE others who like them as well. And I'll also have you know that the woman who developed them is a pediatrician.

So there.

In panda news, they're still watching Mei Xiang (that's her at right) at the National Zoo and hoping that she'll deliver a cub. Ditto Lun Lun at Zoo Atlanta. Ultrasounds on pandas are generally inconclusive, and they experience pseudopregnancies, so until either their urine analyses show that hormone levels have returned to normal or they deliver a cub, we're all in the dark!

Here's a great YouTube video on the birthday celebrations of 3-year-old Su Lin and her 1-year-old sister Zhen Zhen at the San Diego Zoo! There's something highly amusing about a panda cub climbing all over (and falling off of) a cake made of ice, bamboo, and other frozen treats!

A moment away from the server

Just needed a break from rebuilding a software installation. I'm totally redoing the WebOPAC - moving it from one version to a newer version, and unfortunately, that doesn't just mean an upgrade of the software. It's a whole new install, and then each of the 40+ sites needs to be individually rebuilt, the links changed on the web page, their visual OPACs transferred from the old to the new, etc. Tedious work. The installation resisted me for a long time and didn't want to work properly, but I finally got it to see my point of view. It does, however, still occasionally stop working just to show me it can.

Random thoughts:
Yes, there is justification for my having a Wii. Truly. Educause says so.

Busy week last week; I was out of the office to work on the kids' theatre stuff I do every summer. This year we actually ran two productions, which went VERY well! The kids were fabulous and I think they had a good time. I did too, all in all, but boy, was I tired when it was all over! I'm not sure I'm recovered still.

Panda watchers everywhere are zeroed in on the National Zoo in Washington and the Atlanta Zoo (in Atlanta, of course) to see whether Mei Xiang and Lun Lun, respectively, will "bear" another cub this year! Pandas go through all the symptoms of pregnancy whether or not they are actually expecting, so we'll just have to wait for a birth or cessation of symptoms. I'm hoping that Tai Shan (Washington) and Mei Lan (Atlanta) will both have new siblings this year! The other two zoos in the U.S. that have giant pandas, San Diego and Memphis, are out of the running - San Diego's Bai Yun is still nursing Zhen Zhen, and Ya Ya, the female in Memphis, didn't go into estrus this year. Well, she's still young!


In the meantime, we can look forward to a 1 year birthday celebration for little Zhen in San Diego on August 3rd!

:-)

Yikes!

Here it is almost the end of May, and I haven't posted anything for ages. It's been SUCH a busy month...finished "The Odd Couple" (female version) for Elmira Little Theatre (I was Mickey the Cop) and am preparing for the kids' summer show ("Kokonut Island" makes a reprise this year) as well as ELT's fall show - "Evita." More on that to come, I'm sure!

Work-wise, May usually brings plenty of inventories (yes, my trigger finger is sore!) and preparation for the end of the year. Evaluations, all that. A couple of classes, and lots of catalog cleanup and tedious type work!

Of course I've been following the plight of the Giant Pandas in China who were affected by the recent terrible earthquake, especially those at the Wolong Nature Reserve, which was very close to the epicenter of the quake. Amazingly, only two pandas were injured, and six escaped, but five were either recaptured or wandered back. There's one still missing, though. Hope they find it soon! All the panda houses were damaged or destroyed, and sadly, five staff were killed at the reserve.

If you're interested in finding out more about the pandas or helping out with the people & pandas in China, visit the Pandas International website. They have great pictures and information. The National Zoo and the San Diego Zoo also have good information and links.


Happy May!

(The six pandas on the left were moved from the Wolong Reserve to another reserve that was less affected by the earthquake.)

Another reason to really love RSS

Andy Carvin, who works for NPR, posted "The Cutest Panda Video Ever" on his "Waste of Bandwidth" blog. That in turn led me to "The Chengdu Diary" blog that some of the folks at NPR are writing as they prepare for a program from China.

Andy, you are my hero!

:-)

Patience is not always a virtue

All this week the network's been getting progressively slower and slower...a real frustration when you're trying to access the Internet, answer email, answer the phone (which is voice over IP, of course), save documents to your H: drive, fix computer problems remotely, etc., etc., etc.

Now, maybe I'm too patient sometimes, because I just chalked it up to the fact that I know they've been working on the network this week and figured it would eventually get better. A few people who are less patient, however, called the Help Desk and complained, and lo! we were visited this afternoon by a member of the telcomm team. He replaced a small gadget in the switch, rebooted the switch (which didn't want to come right back up but apparently eventually saw things his way), and voila! We have a network that appears to be working at a reasonable speed.

Go figure.

Anytime the network goes down it's fascinating to watch how people deal with it. We're so used to working on email, Internet, etc., and folks just generally seem to be at a loss when that's taken away. I fortunately, was working on a document that was local on my machine, so I was able to keep working, and it was kind of nice not to have email or phone interruptions for a few minutes.

I was not, however, able to watch the pandas. Bummer! The news from San Diego, though, is that their little girl is now officially named Zhen Zhen (which means "Precious"). Congratulations to the staff of SDZ & especially to mom Bai Yun & dad Gao Gao!

Who's organized?

Ah, a dreary and rainy Monday. What better way to start the week?

I need to take a break from tedious detail work, so thought I'd pop on here - it's been too long since I posted anything! Seems like I'm always catching up with something.

Well, Thanksgiving is over, and now we have the crescendo toward Christmas. Am I ready? Not even close! I was at Jo-Ann Fabrics last week waiting to have fabric cut and the woman in front of me (who was buying tulle to wrap baskets) allowed as how when the baskets were wrapped she had all her Christmas stuff done. BEFORE THANKSGIVING. That's just wrong.

Ah, how I aspire to that sort of forethought and organization! If I were that organized, my house would be clean, my desk would be clean, and I would have time to wrap baskets, too. As it is, I'm still in the "what are we going to get so-and-so for Christmas?" stage.

What's kind of funny, though, is that a lot of people look at me and think I'm organized. I guess there are all sorts of organization; I can put a catalog in order without thinking twice and I can really plan something out if I put my mind to it. For example, I'm stage managing for our next theatre production (On Golden Pond) and I've got organizing for a show down to a science. My notes are all in order and I have all the information collated, color coded, and coordinated. The director thinks I'm highly efficient (and so far in this case, I am); I think I might even scare him a little.

With all the organizational tools there are in this day and age, why is it that I can't organize gift giving for Christmas? One of my former supervisors did her shopping all year round; as she found stuff she would buy it for the various people on her list and put it away in these nice little bins she had specifically for that purpose. The thing with that is that you need a) the bins b) the place to store them and c) to remember that you had put stuff away. I tried that technique once (minus the bins, unfortunately) and ended up with multiple things for certain people. I also forgot I had put gifts away and found them the following year, which sort of worked, too, but it kind of defeated the purpose.

Oh, well, I guess I should just be grateful that I can organize some things well and leave it at that. Who wants to be totally organized? That doesn't leave any room for spontaneity - and what fun would life be without that?

In other news - they're naming the little girl panda at the San Diego Zoo today!

Catching up

Looking at my last post, I wondered where on earth June had gone, but I could say the same about July & the first couple weeks of August. Doesn't seem possible that I last posted on July 10th, and here it's August 15th already. In the interim, I've produced a show with our kids' group, auditioned and begun rehearsals for another ("The Full Monty" with Elmira Little Theatre, come see it at Mandeville Hall end of September! More on that later, I'm sure...), rearranged my office to accommodate a roommate (Sue Canfield - yay!), and done a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember at the moment.

I'm currently in the processing of redesigning a database that I've kept for myself for a number of years so that others can use it, too. It always amazes me when I really look at something I've done and try to analyze it to see it from someone else's viewpoint. Kind of scares me to think that my brain processes are that convoluted! It's a failing of mine; I try to make things more difficult than they really are, I think. I'm not certain I'm alone in that, though; seems like a lot of people I know do the same. But maybe that's just because I hang out with people like me! Hmm, that's kind of like a "chicken-and-egg" thing, isn't it? Reminds me of the part in "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows" where Harry and Luna are going into Ravenclaw Tower, and we discover that Ravenclaws don't have a password system like everyone else. No, they have to answer a random question, and this particular question was "Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?" After some discussion with Harry (which has not much to do with actually answering the question) Luna comes back with "Well, then, I think that the answer is that a circle has no beginning." The door guardian opens with the remark "Well reasoned."

This post is beginning to seem like a circle with no beginning, and not well-reasoned at all. But I did want to kind of touch base, as it were, and I think I've had insufficient coffee to make total sense.

Oh, but there IS news in the U.S. panda world - Bai Yun and Gao Gao have produced a third cub (it's actually Bai's 4th, her first, Hua Mei, was sired by Shi Shi via artificial insemination) at the San Diego Zoo. The cub was born on August 3rd and is, by all accounts, a "healthy and vigorous cub" although very quiet, apparently. This is a shot of Bai & her week-old cub (courtesy of my friend Gail, who is a fellow panda fan!). You can just see the black patches starting to show where the eyes and ears are. :-)

That's it for now, I guess...

What happened to June?

I can't believe it's July already. Not only July, but 10 days into it!

It always amuses me that folks think that summer is so much quieter and relaxing for me in my job. I guess in some ways it is - I don't get as much email or as many phone calls from people who are having some kind of technological problem that needs to be fixed ASAP. However, summer is the time to catch up on things I couldn't get to during the school year, as well as a time to do the technical work on the systems that I can't really do when the librarians are actually using them!

The end of June and beginning of July is a whirlwind for me, generally speaking. Case in point - since school was out (is it nearly three weeks ago already?) I've archived, updated, indexed, and packed about 57 catalogs. Plus I've done a few other things here and there...weeding, cleaning out files on servers and my own machines, archiving email, that sort of thing. I decided that it was time to leave that for a few minutes and take a look at other things, like this blog!

What IS quiet is this building in the summer if there are no classes going on in the lab or the large conference room. Some of the folks who work here are only 10 or 11 month employees, so there's less staff, and, of course, it's the time of year when people use up their vacation time. (I'm using some of mine next week!) Right now it's so quiet that I think I'll go see if I'm the only one left it in the building...

Before I do that, though, I need to mention that yesterday was Tai Shan's 2nd birthday. Happy birthday, little guy!

Trying to be more intentional...

...about using this blog, I added a link to it to my personalized Google Home Page. So now when I open a browser window, it'll be staring right at me and reminding me somewhat accusingly (somewhat like my cat Triscuit when her bowl isn't filled to her specifications) that I haven't posted recently.


Who knows, I might even find interesting stuff to post!


My colleagues will be disappointed, I'm sure, if I don't include at least occasional panda information, and as there isn't ANY on this blog as yet, let me just add this lovely image of Tai Shan, the National Zoo's youngest panda (he's not REALLY a cub anymore, although he was when the photo was taken). A very good friend of mine took this picture last October when we went to visit Tai and his mom and dad (Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, respectively).