Play VS Work

Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.
- Evan Esar

Wow, yea.  That is true!  Crochet is technically work, but I love it, and do it all the time and enjoy it.  It’s technically work to do home improvement stuff, but D and I do it a lot anyway, and enjoy it. It’s technically work to organize things, but you all know that I live for that shit.

So this begs the question – How do you make work become play?  How do you find ways to mold your work into something you enjoy doing?  And then what do you do about the things you *have* to do that are not so fun?  I guess that becomes the checks n balances part of it… and is why we eventually get paid to ‘work’ and it is not considered ‘play’.

However, I am going to make a conserted effort when I do return to work next week to begin to think about how to change my ‘work’ so it is more ‘play’ and therefore more enjoyable.  First, I plan to list all the things I like to do, followed by a list of all the things I dont like to do.  Next, I’ll look at that second list, and work hard to identify the things I do that are unnecessary in today’s flavor of librarianship.  I also will look at that second list and see if there are matches with my work peers as something someone considers ‘play’.  Maybe a trade?

It would be interesting to create a wiki at work for all my work peers – two columns, what you like, and what you dont like.  From there, it’s an easy step to simply let people choose what to do and distribute tasks and initiatives.  And those things no one likes to do?  Well, again, distribute equally to ensure no one does nothing but crap they dont like to do.  After all, it is still work.

Tad’s Meme

Cam, originally uploaded by jezmynne.

So there’s a thing going around friend feed that instructs, “Take a picture of yourself right now. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair – just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editing. Post these instructions with the picture.”

So I did. And I really like how this pic turned out. Yes, it’s not perfect, yes I see flaws and imperfections, but it’s who I am, right now, in that moment. I was tired, I’d taught three classes that day, I was wrung out and ready for bed, but after all that, I was still able to serve up a half decent, content smile. And that’s kinda cool. : )

Printing

Boy this is my day for Graphjam, that’s for sure.  As many of you know, the most difficult thing I do every day, is try to print.  My BFF thinks that maybe I was a lumberjack in a past life and this is paper’s way of thwarting my use of it.  Either way, this graph is right on the money.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

GraphJam Spam

I love my spam.  You all know I do.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: spam, graphjam

Arrr, Mateys!

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate day!

Arrr, Mateys!, originally uploaded by jezmynne.

Vons VS Albertsons

Yes, I know, there’s all this important stuff going on.  Some lady is banning books and doing some sort of presidential thing with some old dude, and there was some big thunderstorm down south or something, and this is total errata, but hey, it’s this kind of errata that I enjoy pondering.

To start, I have to say that I am quite loyal.  I pick a place to go, I like it, and I go there all the time.  Right now, that place is Vons, and has been for a number of years.  It’s nice, I know where all my favorite junk is, I get a 10 cent fuel discount per 50$ bucks spent, and everyone is nice and helpful.  Occasionally I’ll swing into a Stater Bros because it’s way cheaper, but not such a pleasant shopping experience.

So a few weeks ago I went to Vons to cash in all of Lila’s change and their coin star was full.  So I did something I’ve never done – willingly gone to Albertsons.  I used their coinstar, and immediately placed the slip in my wallet necessitating an additional trip back.

So now that I’ve been there twice, I have more of an opinion.  Albertson’s store layout is really confusing with the split aisles, each with their own signs requiring you to have a telescope to read all the way down from one end to the other.  Their organization is less than intuitive.  However, they have a pharmacy right inside that sells stuff normal grocery stores dont sell.  Albertson’s bakery is really good… you should see the chocolate chip cookies I brought home, and those lemon flower things are bad ass.  Vons, however, has got the corner on the service market, though.  Vons has tons of people working there and you’re forever being asked, “finding everything okay today?” as you wander around.  Which is nice, I think, because not only do you have someone who can help you (as opposed to my experience at Albertsons where I had to find someone to call someone to go get me my friggin meat), and because it is instilling in our youth the concept of common curtesy.

Oh, and Albertson’s is really weird with their attempt at traffic flow management… you cant exit these doors, you cant enter these doors, you cant go down those aisles, no one is there, this is a dead end by the wood… it’s rather maze like.  But they do have self check stations.

Hm.  I’m torn.  Oh, where shall I shop?  You know, I think I’ll nom my lemon flower cookie and ponder the new Fresh n Easy store they put up down the street…

A Day (week) in the Life

Back today…. I enjoyed some wonderful time away from work and mostly away from the Intarwebz for the past week.  My family, Dad, Stepmom, and Gramma, came in to visit from New Mexico.  They stayed the weekend and we ate, hung out, watched my kid be a very poor loser at checkers, and generally had a great time visiting.  It sucks having immediate family a few states over.

Monday I took my little one to see Wall-E, which has got to be the best damned kid movie I’ve ever seen.  It was really powerful… I felt the full range of emotions one would expect from a grown up movie, and I was amazed at how much they could communicate without languague.  Quite profound, the image of fat humans plugged into a chair with a screen in front of their face, and the subsequent lack of interaction.  The dismal image of Earth, cluttered and filthy with trash and advertisements is a shocking reminder where we’re going if we dont change our ways.  Bravo, Pixar.  Bravo.

In addition to the movie, my kid and I wandered around the local hot spots, walking, hitting the bookstore, lunch, and all that fun stuff.  I bought a set of jacks at a local toy store, and quickly learned that my Lila doesn’t do that ‘bounce/catch’ thing so well.  She wanted to modify the rules so that I bounced the ball while she picked up the jacks, but I stood firm on her need to master hand/eye coordination on a teeny superbounce ball.  She elected to go find bugs after that.

It was great to have some time away from it all.  I generally ignored work email, only surfing for reference questions or queries from users, stayed offline, limiting my internet fun to games and my crochet groups.   But, back now, and the time away refreshed me to get motivated and ready for fall.

So today I taught my first class of the year, for HMC’s summer institute program.  27 newbie frosh brought in for leadership training asked brilliant questions and were generally engaged in my session.  I forgive the poor girl who napped through the hour, because everyone else was on the ball.  I continued my new trend of using LOL cats, GraphJam, and images from Fail Blog, which was a whopping success. I’ve never seen students so interested in a ppt about library research before.  And of course I dazzled them with a few Google goodies, like Scholar and Uncle Sam.

After that, back to my desk and finish those Sakai videos.  I finished two, and I am pleased with how they turned out.  I also exported the vids for iPod/iPhone, and boy, that was hella cool.

So it was a good day.  I got a lot done, and I’m about as near as ready as I’ll ever be for fall.  Tomorrow, I’ll log into RTM and see what else I need to take care of.   : )

Spam Fail

Spam Fail, originally uploaded by jezmynne.

I like my spam, really, I do. I find much of my spam highly amusing. Like this.

Got Milk?

When the hell did they start serving school milk in BAGS?

BookMooch

So my good friend Candace has been on me to check out BookMooch, and at lunch today insisted I create an account. So I did.

BookMooch is a website where you post books you want to find homes for, and as you send off books, you earn points to ask for books to be sent to you. Sounds cool, right? Lordy knows I’ve got way too many bookies around my house that could use a good home. So when I got home, and added a few books until Pandora decided she wasnt happy talking to the Internet anymore and my kid wanted something to eat.

I plugged pesky Pandora in and told her to sit there an think about connecting to the Internet.

I heated up a piece of left over pizza for Lila.

I sat back down, and had requests for 5 books! I was floored! One of the books was this lovely, super expensive hardback book, The Cross and the Serpent, I had from my history days at UNM. I’ve held on to it for all these years because I couldnt bear to part with it; it *is* a lovely book. I am so happy to see that it was requested for ‘Mooching’ right away. I am so delighted that lovely book is off to someone who wants it.

I’m so pleased. : )

Forcing Outlook to Exit

So on a whim this AM I downloaded IE 8 Beta for Giggles, and got one. IE 8 has “Activities,” which are a flavor of browser plug ins that allow sharing, emailing, and incorporating things into Facebook and the like. One of those “Activities” is emailing something via Outlook from an Email button on the browser. Clicking that button opens Outlook and resulted in this:

Ha Ha. We all like to Force Outlook to Exit. : )

Help! My Dreams have been Hijacked!

K, so y’all know I’m taking these classes at the local community college, right? Word (specialist), Word (expert), and Excel. Aw yea, loads o fun. Really, I do like MS2K7 over previous editions… when I can find the right friggin’ tab. And it’s not like MS’s crappy help will give you an image with a big red arrow pointing to what you want. or even a handy file path.

So this Saturday I spent nearly all day doing 3 chapters of homework and stuff (with fun breaks here and there, like ‘put the laundry in the dryer’ and ‘mop the kitchen floor’). For whatever reason, the had-been-good-until-this-point-textbook took a break from reality and failed to clarify some ‘click heres’ in a few (most) particularly important places, resulting in some very hair tearing and frustrating hunts, for example, the elusive “Edit Image Design Tab” (which I honestly dont think exists). Finally, after doing nothing even remotely satisfying for an entire friggin’ saturday, I was done.

Come nite nite, yea, guess what I dreamt. Word. Excel. Putting images into Word. And Excel. Putting Excel into Word, and Word into Excel.

Not fun. I do NOT think dreaming about Microsoft Products is remotely gratifying.

sigh.

Headfonze

Ah, the things I can now say to this man….

See, I have all this friggin homework that comes with these friggin classes I’m taking at Chaffey. I’m glad I’m taking them, mind you; I’m learning MS Word and Excel 2k7 AND enjoying an extra 300$ a month by having my student loans on in school deferment, but sheesh! I get to blow significant chunks of my free time on homework.

So back to our story. Since I have to *think* while doing the aforementioned homework, I’ve been griping on D to use headphones when listening to his music or playing his ‘kill ‘em all’ shooter games (granted, the machine guns and death screaming sounds are shockingly relevant to using MS 2k7, but still disruptive to though processes). D goes off and gets a pair of skullcandy headphones. They work remarkably well – i cant hear a thing and neither can he, from the outside world.

I now find it amusing to stand behind him and say things like, “Jesus visited me in my dreams last night and I am carrying the second coming of christ” or “I’m having a torrid love affair with a donkey I met online” or “I’m taking your wallet to the Apple store, honey.”