Thing #11

L2LCPL, Libraries 3

I’m back at work, continuing in the “23 Things” program.

For Thing 11, I tried out Library Thing.  My account is at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/SondySue.

Library Thing is a site to catalog your library books.  A fun idea!  You can catalog 200 books for free–seems like a kind of piddly amount.  Still, for $25 you can get a lifetime subscription and catalog as many as you want.

One fun thing about this–After cataloging five books, I decided to see what books Library Thing would recommend I should read next.  Sure enough, most of the books listed are ones I already have–and love.  But the first one was new to me–so I’m going to check it out and read it–the comments do make it sound like a book I’d like.

So, the question is:  Is Library Thing worth it for someone who has a bad habit of buying books?  Would I really even begin to get them entered?  Would it maybe embarrass me and help me finally control my book-buying?

I do have my own system of keeping track of my books–and I review everything I read (Well, okay, I’m a year behind–but I try!) on www.sonderbooks.com.  Library Thing could be interesting in “meeting” people who enjoy the same books, but I’m not sure I have time or interest in keeping it up….  Maybe I will enter some more books, or maybe enter books as I review them, and see what I think.

I Love Libraries!

Librarians, Libraries 2

Today our branch manager mentioned that last month our juvenile circulation was up by 40%.  She said she believed this was because a second children’s librarian and I have been added to the staff.  When the library only had one person in the children’s department, she naturally wasn’t able to keep the children’s desk manned.  Now we have someone sitting among the children’s books almost all the time.

It felt good to be told that my presence has made a difference.  Sometimes I sit back there and feel like I’m only getting the opportunity to smile at babies, hear clever children read, and start the computer for kids.  Fun for me, but is it helping anyone?

But yesterday I got to help a Dad find summer reading books for his first grader.  I got to find more train books for our little friend Miles.  And I even got to help my friend Darlene’s adorable children find books to check out.

(I know my former boss will wonder if the stats are up simply because I use that library now.  However, I’ve been checking out more YA books than Juvenile ones, honest!)

And really, even if I don’t hand them a book, surely it’s a good thing to win the heart of a toddler, as I got the chance to do today, simply by smiling at him.  The mother was one of our many, many immigrant patrons, and I think she felt a little more welcome when I obviously thought her son was adorable.

I do love libraries.  You get to meet parents who care about their kids enough to read to them.  You get to share amazing books with amazing kids.  It was nice to be reminded today how privileged I am to work at a library.  Also nice to hear that my having fun at the library might even be making a difference!

The Latest

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Here’s what I sent in an e-mail to my friends, just what’s going on in my life these days:

It’s now been almost a year since I came to Virginia with Timothy and Josh.  I’ve been very blessed this year.
We spent the first few months living in Darlene’s basement–so generous of them to let us stay there!  I especially enjoyed the chance to get to know Darlene’s brilliant and adorable kids, Ryan & Michelle.  But by far the hugest blessing of living here has been the chance to interact so frequently with two such wonderful friends–Darlene and Kathe.
And they go to a wonderful church, Gateway Community.  I joined the home group that Kathe and Darlene attend, and that group helped me tackle the daunting job of moving in when my furniture came in October–completely dissassembled.  I still haven’t completely finished the job of unpacking and moving in, but it’s getting close, and these dear people pitching in to help, right at the start, made an enormous difference.
Josh left in October to attend Full Sail Real World Education in Orlando, Florida.  He’s studying film, and is already only a year away from getting his Bachelor’s degree.  (It’s an accelerated, intensified program that goes year-round.)  He has already directed his first short film, and he loves it!  I’m thrilled to see him enjoying it so much, and excelling.
Timothy attends the school where our church meets on Sundays.  I can’t say that he enjoys it, but I can tell it’s a great school–You know it’s a good sign when every teacher at Back-to-School Night says how glad they are to get to teach there.  Timothy did have a rough year, but at his lowest, I was impressed at how his teachers noticed and cared and helped him get back on track.
Though his biggest boost came when he got to visit his Dad in Japan over Spring Break.  And he’s thoroughly enjoying having the summer off.  In this year, he became a teenager and shot past me in height, and seems to be still growing.  He completed Geometry in 7th grade, and at this school that’s not even unusual, so he will smoothly go into a computerized Algebra II class next year.
I’ve been taking online classes with Drexel University to get my Master’s in Library and Information Science.  I’m now on my 4th quarter.  I’ve loved my classes, and only have two classes left–I’ll finish in December.  It worked out nicely that I was able to be a full-time student until this summer.
And I got a great job!  I was starting to feel desperate, applying for jobs that didn’t show any interest.  I had started looking at jobs in DC, even though that would be an awful commute.  Before Spring Break, I hated the thought of spending so much less time with Timothy, as well.
And then, at just the right time, when Timothy was doing better, and I had almost finished my 3rd full-time quarter, a job came up at the local library my friend Kathe uses, and I got it!  It’s a half-time Library Assistant position in the Children’s Department–perfect for me.  On a good day, I can get to work in 7 minutes, which is fabulous as well.  Sometimes I get to see my friends at the library, or get to have lunch with them.  It’s a real treat to work there.
And they are very supportive of my classes, and very encouraging about the possibility of getting a promotion to a librarian job after I finish my degree.  So that’s tremendously encouraging.
Lately, I’ve gotten my website of book reviews revised and I’m posting again:  www.sonderbooks.com.  I’m also enjoying writing a couple of other blogs.  To keep an attitude of thankfulness, I’m trying to post every day something I’m thankful for at www.sonderbooks.com/sonderblessings.  And I’m also collecting inspiring quotations at www.sonderbooks.com/sonderquotes.  For just “ordinary” blogging, and pictures, I’m using www.sonderbooks.com/sonderjourneys.  They all have links to each other, so you can go to one and be able to access the others.
I guess using these blogs, I’m not feeling as much need to send out general e-mail newsletters.  With the blogs, people will only read it who want to read it, and I don’t feel like I’m clogging anyone’s inbox.  But I did get to thinking that I should let people know they are there!  So now I’m telling my friends and family:  take a look at my blogs now and then!  🙂  Life is good, and I’d like to share it with you.
God has been very faithful this past year.  I feel very loved and cared for by my friends and the people at church.
I got to go to the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, DC, this past June and got to meet lots of authors and got very excited about becoming a librarian.
This month, Steve will move from Japan to Langley AFB, in the Southeast corner of Virginia.  It’s about 3 to 4 hours away.  We are still married, and I am still praying with all my heart for our marriage to be restored.  In the meantime, it’s a distance where it will be much easier for Timothy to spend time more regularly with his Dad.
On August 26, Steve will arrive, and on August 27, I’m going to drive Timothy down so he can spend a week with his Dad before school starts the day after Labor Day.  My own summer quarter ends at midnight the night of Labor Day, so Timothy and I don’t have any overlapping vacation left–but at least I can do most of the hard work on projects during that week when Timothy’s with Steve.
Timothy and I didn’t really do a summer vacation this year.  Josh came to spend a week with us around Independence Day, but with my classes, we’re mainly just hanging out at home–which is what Timothy prefers, anyway.  Next year, I should have some vacation time built up, so maybe we can begin seeing America.  (Oh, and next year, ALA Conference is happening in Anaheim–sounds like a great reason to visit family!)
So–that’s the latest with us!  I love hearing from you all–and will do my best to answer.  Please forgive me if I’m too scatter-brained to do it–just e-mail to me again!  Right now I really should be working on my class projects, but it was nice to take a break!

Thing #10

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Thing 10 is to play around with image generators.  I thought I’d make a sign in honor of the logo of http://www.rejoiceministries.org — God Heals Hurting Marriages.

The catch is that the image I generated on the site, http://www.letterjames.com/, is much bigger and easier to read than what I was able to save.  A little bit frustrating.

However, on the site you can upload your own pictures and then make albums and calendars and things like that.  Could be a lot of fun.

Thing #9

L2LCPL 0

Now I’m on Thing 9 of the library’s 23 Things.  If I do them all, I get an MP3 player!

For Thing 9, I’m supposed to add some RSS feeds to my bloglines account and blog about it.

I’m warming up to Bloglines.  This try, I discovered the “Add” button, which makes it easier to add feeds.

The blogs I like best seem to all be found as links on my friend Akelda the Gleeful’s blog.  She has some great links!

That’s how I recommend finding feeds.  Start with a blog that you like, then look at the links they link to, and so on….  Real networking–because if you were to graph the links, you’d have an intricate network.

Today, I read all of Akelda’s “Children’s Books That Never Were”.  Sooooo funny!  Indeed, I don’t think that Marjorie Flack could have gotten Angus Lost published if the original idea was to present Angus as a platypus.  So good she got direction…. 🙂

Bloglines also let me know about a bunch of knitting blogs–I’m looking forward to looking those over, too.  Bloglines did NOT have a set of Kidlit blogs–so I’m delighted that Akelda has plenty of links to those.

I’m starting to like RSS feeds.  It’s not as simple as messages in your e-mail inbox.  I tend to prefer that–and some of my Sonderbooks subscribers do too, I can tell.  However, once you have a place to go to see what’s new, it is a convenient form….  It’s probably better to keep the list from getting too long, so you can keep track of the ones you really follow.

Thing #8

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I’m doing a series of 23 Things for Loudoun County Public Library’s Learning 2.0 program.  We are supposed to be learning to use Web 2.0 technology.  On each step, we’re to blog about our experiences.

Thing #8 was to set up a bloglines account and subscribe to some feeds.

So far, I’m not real happy with bloglines–I like My Yahoo much better, and wish we could have taken our pick.  I probably won’t use Bloglines a lot in the future.

Besides, I set up my own personal feed reader at http://sondy.blogspot.com, the former site of my blog.  (And there are archives there of my adventures in Europe.)

I believe that Thing #9 has us exploring Bloglines a bit further, so I will see if I grow any more fondness for it.

I tried to add Brotherhood 2.0 to my feeds at Bloglines, and it didn’t work real well.  That’s the video blog my son and I are now hooked on.  It’s library related, because John Green is a YA author, right?

My life now is busy, busy, busy, but I figure that since Learning 2.0 is a program sponsored by my employer, I can try to get a Thing done every week or two, and that’s fair.  It’s a challenge doing that.  Sharing an office, running story time, Babygarten, and Summer Reading programs, we don’t get a lot of time at our desks.  So I’m seizing the day today….

Way Too Funny for an Assignment

Librarians, Libraries, Simply Silly 0

For my Resources for Children class, I have to follow the YALSA-Bk List, as well as Joyce Valenza’s blog, Never Ending Search.

Last week, the YALSA List had a link to a hilarious video called “Accio Deathly Hallows”–Hank Green, brother of John Green, the YA author, sang a song about how anxious he was to read the new Harry Potter book.

I already knew a tiny bit about John Green/Hank Green’s blog–at the Printz Awards, I and the rest of the audience said, “Hi Hank!” to a video camera for the blog.  The two brothers decided to communicate only through their video blog for one year.

The song was wonderful!  So I sent a link to my now 13-year-old son. 

My son has spent hours of the last three days (EVEN after getting a Wii!) beginning at the beginning of the video blog and watching every single entry.  He’s up to April.

I watched today’s and think I’m hooked.  Anyone who gets excited about cataloging his home library is my kind of person!

As if that weren’t enough, in Joyce Valenza’s blog, there was a link to some utterly hilarious librarian videos, created by “Dr. Loopy.”  I’ve done some hard laughing tonight.  Is that allowed for a school assignment?

(I’ve added both hilarious links to my Blogroll.)

Two Teenagers

Family 0

Today my younger son turns 13.  So from now until next March 19, I am the proud mother of two teenagers.

I’ve got it easy–the older one is off at college and has already moved out, so I’m not actually living with two teenagers.  But I do have two teenage sons, and I’m bursting with pride in them.

Timothy’s Dad sent him a Wii for his birthday.  I like the way it makes playing video games a more physical experience!  I’m going to have to try it some time myself–I could use some exercise.

Tim also has a thing for donuts.  When he was very small, we had Dilbert’s Desktop Games on our computer.  He’s the only 3-year-old I’ve ever heard of who pretended to be “Techno-Bill.”  In the game, the characters would chant, “Gotta get more donuts!  Gotta get more donuts!”  I am convinced that phrase is hard-wired deep in Timothy’s brain.

So–in his online searches, he discovered the intriguing donut shop, The Fractured Prune.  It looks like there’s one near a local comic book shop, so we will make a pilgrimage today or tomorrow.  I think he’ll have a fun birthday.

Positive Deviance

Devotional Thoughts, Marriage 2

I’m taking a class this quarter called “Management of Information Services.”  In it, we have to do a group project and present a management tool.  My group chose Positive Deviance.

Positive Deviance focuses on people who act outside the norm–on the positive side.  “Deviance is generally viewed as a bad thing.  But on one end of the curve, we find deviance in the form of excellence, the very behavior we want to promote.”–Robert Quinn, interviewed by Dennis Sparks in “Change: It’s a Matter of Life or Slow Death,” Journal of Staff Development, 22 (4), p. 49.

As I was reading the article above for background material, it struck me that positive deviance applies to marriages!

That morning, I read a quotation that struck me in A New Kind of Normal, by Carole Kent:  Paul and Silas’s discipline of praying and praising not only broke their own chains, but it also broke the chains of every other inmate in the prison.”–quoting Karen Beck, p. 98.

I thought of that passage when I read this in the Quinn interview:  “When we have successfully experienced a deep change, it inspires us to encourage others to undergo a similar experience.  We are all potential change agents.  As we discipline our talents, we deepen our perceptions about what is possible. … We must continually choose between deep change or slow death.”

Continuing:  “So now when people say something can’t be done, I ask for examples of positive deviance.  But people are often uncomfortable with these notions because they suggest that we all have the potential to do things that many claim are impossible.

“To tie all of this together, if we are not growing, we are dying.  And if we are growing and pushing the edges of the system, we will meet great resistance.  And yet it is possible for us to be positive deviants, and positive deviants change the world.”

“When people become empowered, they realize that they had put constraints upon themselves.  Suddenly, they are able to do all kinds of things we previously thought were impossible.”

How does this relate to marriage?

Well, if I look around at the norm in America, a marriage as far gone as mine is surely doomed.

But why should I copy the norm?  Wouldn’t I rather imitate the positive deviants, the people who have succeeded in healing and restoring their marriages, with God’s help?  They have done exactly the thing that seems impossible.

Positive deviance tells us that if you want excellence, find those who are acting with excellence and imitate them.

That’s why I choose to follow the example of the good people at http://www.rejoiceministries.org/, and choose to stand for my marriage, and choose to trust God.  Truly, He can do the impossible.  As more and more of us choose to rise above the norm, this positive deviance can spread.  We can see the power of God to heal.

I know that marital healing after severe hurts is NOT impossible–because people like Bob and Charlyne Steinkamp have shown me what can happen when you put your marriage into God’s hands.  I’d rather imitate people like that.

God Doesn’t Give Us the Silent Treatment

Devotional Thoughts, Sunday's Sermon 0

I’ve been thinking lately that I should not be surprised when God specifically, pointedly, answers a specific question I ask him about what I should do or how I should act.

After all, he says in James 1:  “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all, without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

There’s only one requirement.  We’ve got to believe that the advice God gives is worth following.  “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt.  For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That man should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  He is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”

I’ve gotten a lot of answers to specific questions lately.  It continues to amaze me.  But perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised.

Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t still have any questions.  God has told me what He wants me to do over and over again.  Why do I still get doubts and questions?  But that’s the beauty of the fact that God will give wisdom “without finding fault.”  He never lectures like an impatient parent, “Now, I’m only going to say this once!”

Recently, I found myself wondering if I was being “unrealistic” believing that God had told me to stand for my marriage.  With all the hurts behind us, it didn’t seem “realistic,” it didn’t seem “practical” to think that God could possibly restore our relationship.  I asked God, “Am I just having wishful thinking?”  “Am I being unrealistic?”

The very next day, Pastor Ed preached a sermon titled, “The Limitations of Common Sense” (http://www.gatewaychurch.org/content/view/526/85/) which directly and specifically answered my questions.  The example was Jeroboam, King of Israel.  God had promised to give him ten tribes of Israel, and even build him an everlasting dynasty if He would follow the Lord.  But that request did not seem practical….

When God gives you a plan of action coupled with a promise, it’s not about what’s realistic or practical.  It’s about what God can do.

The question is not:  Is this practical?  The question is:  Will I obey God?