In some ways I am afraid I’m not giving any one team enough attention, in others, I think I have good leads in place where I need them, I just am learning about the next level of management — what happens after immediate front lines of management? I’m not sure that has ever been something I’ve thought about in great depth. I’m not sure until about two months ago I ever necessarily thought it was something I’d be considering. I mean, sure, I have made jokes about being a director, but actually putting thought into managing multiple layers? Not so much, yet here I am, and thinking damn hard about how to do it in a way that supports all those levels. I’m glad my team is comprised of who it’s comprised of. They’re all pretty dang awesome and they all work their asses off considering the limitations they’re, we’re all presented with.

*side vent about the state & quality of meta/data, both publisher and library, deleted*

So yes. Work has been keeping me busy.

Also keeping me busy: our house finally sold. I feel like I missed out on fall — there are rumors of first snow on Friday. The leaves are about half way off the trees and… it feels winter-ish to me. Which is fine. I like winter, but I really like fall, and in the crazy of the house stuff, I feel like it passed me by somehow. I imagine at some point schedule will reinflict itself, and I’m looking forward to it. We are sometimes too tied to it, but it gives our lives structure and we can roll along knowing that if today is Monday, I’m going into work before Paul whose day it is to drop the girls off at school, and if it’s every other Monday, then there’s Girl Scouts.

I am not doing enough gyro & yoga, this summer’s stint into pre-teacher foundation training and update workshop aside. I need to recommit to that. Tomorrow instead of scheduling a lunch at noon and bailing on yoga, I scheduled lunch at 1:15. I feel like a better person when I get more yoga and gyro in. I’m more patient, I think more clearly. You know — all the benefits of exercise.

M1 is on swim team now. M2 desperately wants to be. On Friday afternoons, during swim team practice, M2 and I swim and she practices hard so that she can get to the next level. She taught herself flip turns… well, with life guard input — she was trying so earnestly and since most of the life guards also help out with lessons, they will frequently have a helpful word. Especially since in her earnestness, she’s also usually wearing the team suit that was meant for M1 but in the wrong size but fit M2 perfectly, so we just kept it. In the next level, she can be considered for swim team, I think. She wants so badly to be part of the team. Perhaps next time I’m there, I’ll mention that to Jenna and see what the requirements are. Maybe it really is that she needs to be in Fish, but I think M2 does as well as some of the other littler swim team kids. Something to ponder, anyway…

It would take me an eternity to catch everything up and that wasn’t really the point of this post anyway, although that seems to be what it has devolved into.

To say this year has been one massive growth opportunity is almost an understatement of epic proportions.

Taxes knocked out gyro teacher training. Still doing Orcas & the pre-foundation training, but… Ah well. Perhaps it’s for the best. There are, after all, only 24 hours in a day.

So much I should probably be doing. Like, oh, getting presentation stuff together for the Thursday night UBC presentation.

I’m not one to really like flying by the seat of my pants. When given the opportunity, I do really try to make sure I’m prepared, but lately there’s been so much flying towards me, that I’ve been getting better at just rolling with it and trying to fly. Sometimes there’s a Wiley E. Coyote moment, but pick up, dust off, move on… can’t wait around, more stuff coming!

I decided to do gyrokinesis teacher training, but it looks like it might have to be another year or another trainer. And there’s enough going on in my life that it has to take the back seat for now. It’ll be good. Next year I should have earned an additional week of vacation (I think), which would allow me to actually pull off a training if the timing was right. Thinking about yoga teacher training too. But then, I’m thinking of a lot of things. Winning the lottery, selling the house, getting gyrotonic tower (they’re beautiful), etc, etc. Maybe some day some of this will all happen. In the meantime, continuing to arch, curl, breathe, & the like.

I’m now not only the manager of the bibliographic control/cataloging team, but I’m also managing the data team as well, unexpectedly. I think it’ll be a bit of a crazy next couple months, but once we get into a flow, it should be alright. I think both my teams are strong enough that we’ll all do fine, and it’ll give me a chance to get a more holistic view of the metadata my teams deal with, which is always a good thing.

I’m simultaneously looking forward to it and somewhat apprehensive about the whole thing. The distance is one thing. Eight miles? I could do eight miles and not really be phased. In my mind’s eye, I can picture eight miles from here & it’s a ways, but it’s not too bad. I think after about eight miles, I get into more urban and more bicyclists, and the roads I’ll be crossing are more major crossings, and more people, etc, etc. After eight miles, I don’t really have a sense of the trail I’ll be bicycling on either. Not that I haven’t done it before, I just haven’t done it for something like 16 years and I’m kinda foggy about how it all goes. I think I can just keep following the yellow brick road (and all the regular bike commuters), but still. I like to be able to visualize this stuff.

I’m also not a super confident rider. I’m ok. I’m not particularly fast, even with an electric-assist, I average out at about 10mph unless I’m going downhill. You know, gravity helps everyone out there. Being slow like that means the silly lycra/spandex people zoom past me. As does pretty much everyone else, but… whatever. I like bicycling. I just don’t like going up hills & I have help with that now. Also, my bike is real purdy.

I think my best bet tomorrow is just to let myself be a tourist. That’s more fun anyway. That means instead of being all boring and serious and focused, I get to look around and stop and smell the wild roses and take pictures of the lakes and generally dawdle & annoy the boring, serious, focused spandex people. And if I’m late to work, eh, I’m late to work. It’s an experiment, after all…

In other news, got the article draft out to the people who need to contribute to it. A little (a lot) later than I wanted it going out, but… it’s out & hopefully they get it back to me in time to revise & send on to the editor so we can go through the whole process again. Also did a walk through of a webinar presentation. I’m the host… which of course brings to mind, “I am your host und sagen wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret!” I fear the presentation will be nowhere near so interesting as Cabaret, certainly not choreographed as well (I mean, really — who can compete with Bob Fosse?), but it’ll be interesting.

And if I’m going to be coherent enough to be peddling a bicycle, electric-assist or no, I need to be going to bed in the very near future. So that’s that for now.

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women’s children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

–James Oppenheim

M2 has discovered the glitter — our house is covered in it, just in time for the magical holiday season. My kids are so sweet. They’re kids, so they get annoying like all kids, but they’re sweet good kids when it matters.

No work this week so I ah… I got sick, lost my voice, my car got backed into while it was getting its oil changed (with an OOF-y estimate, but that’s why we have insurance), and I’m kinda recovering now from being sick, sorta, except my voice seems reluctant to return, and I get tired fast. This is the kind of vacation I hate because it went sideways on me. But even though it went sideways, I’m still so thankful for all the really good things in my life that… so it went sideways. We’ll try this vacation thing again in a few weeks around Xmas. Of course, I’ll be carless probably during that time because that’s probably when I’ll take my car in for fixies, but… Maybe I should get my car fixed before then and figure out how the whole rental car thing works. Decisions for another day. There’s so much that I have to be thankful for and that I’m lucky to have that it seems ungracious to complain about the little stuff.

Also, there’s been pie this week. That’s right. PIE.

In other news:

• I love my new job. It has it’s challenges, but they’re good challenges and I work with good people.
• M2 is finishing off the last of her medicine for a strep throat diagnosis that turned out to be staph instead. Not the whatsit resistant one, “they usually tell us when it’s that”, just run of the mill. Makes me wonder if that’s what it was the times last year when it was diagnosed as “Not Strep.” I might have to ask from here on out assuming treatment is required for it. It looks and hurts suspiciously similarly…
• Our back deck is now finished and stained. Hoorah! It looks so nice. Now that we’re past the dog days of summer and starting into my favorite season of fall. Not that I didn’t get a massive sunburn on my shoulders. UGH.
• Mmmmmm, fall…
• We went and saw Julie & Julia. It was lovely. We followed it with dinner at Persimmon where we were the only people in the restaurant until about five minutes before we left. The lovely owner brought us two candles to sit at our table with us, since we were re-attempting our anniversary dinner. The dinner was perfect & tasty. It really could not have been lovelier.
• The prior weekend I had a gyrokinesis class with the ever charming Mia. There wasn’t really any doubt in my mind that I would love it. Now I’m just plotting how to get a regular fix. The length of class I want is at the same time I *should* be sitting/exercising at the Y while the little girls take swimming lessons. I could take a class half as long, but… it’s half as long! Anyway. LOVE. No surprise. I am what I am, for sure.
• I gave the tortle a new home this weekend. She has responded by burying herself gleefully in the dirt. She comes out to eat, wade, bask, & wander around, and then buries herself under her little log again.
• Aaand, I think that’s about it. Probably stuff most of y’ins reading this already knew…

Yesterday I went for an 11 mile ride on Elby, my electric bike. Came home and took a long hard nap — if I start riding to work (around 13 miles), I won’t have the luxury of recovering from my ride with a nap! I think this will require working up to since the round trip will be closer to 26 miles by EOD. My time is not all that fast, even with the electric assist — I averaged 10 or 11 or so mph yesterday (11 miles in 1h:1m). I’ll need to pick up the speed some too. My goal is to get to work in an hour (or less). I have work to do, kids to pick up, blah blah blah blah. I do wonder if I’ll ever make that time without showing up all bright red. I guess people would get used to it… Hopefully I don’t prove myself to be too much of a princess to do it semi-regularly.

The ride itself was pretty lovely — going past fences of honeysuckle, hills covered in wild roses, the lake. I will say that warm lake was not my favorite smell, though. I will have to get used to the seat too. About eight miles in, my girl bits were objecting. Happily my sit bones were quite content with the state of affairs though, which is an improvement. My hands & arms also didn’t freak out from the ride. Hoorah! I was dumb and didn’t put sunscreen on. I got a faint burn, but it’s gone already today — but for the future, I will be remembering the sunscreen, even if it’s earlier in the day than freaking high noon. I meant to start out earlier, but the first ride was an epic fail when I switched gears… too fast? In combo with a pause in pedaling? I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I managed to derail the chain off the front gear, and it was a bitch to get it rerailed. Things like this make me apprehensive of making a regular commute on bike, although I think it was just noobishness on my part and trying to get gears switched & being uneven, etc. It’s not like occasionally shit doesn’t go wrong in a car too, hello clutch & clutch stuff my first week of my new job…

My new job! Is awesome. I have lots to catch up on that I’ve not been paying attention to, since my focus the last five or so years has been pretty much taxonomy, but… I’ll get there. And since I’m kinda in the deep end of the pool, I’ll figure out how to swim fast. :) It’s mostly a matter of following up on the questions as they come up and making sure the information gets filed away in my brain in a way that enables retrieval.

Today I need to go hack back the roses, they’re getting out of control. I should probably do some weeding & other stuff too. Sounds like not too much — P hacked back the blackberries that were trying to take over the north side of the house. Which means I need to hunt down the sunscreen and a big hat. And thinking of going out in the sun makes me feel suspiciously like a nap would be such a lovely thing… Mmmm. Naaaappppp.

/as you were…

P is out golfing today, leaving me with the girls. It’s a beautiful day, not entirely sure what I’m going to do with them though… not for lack of things to do (clean rooms, fish tanks, parties, etc).M2 came in this morning at 8 — I’m ready for a little nap already. My fault, I suppose, for not going to bed earlier… but really what’s new?

Probably next weekend we bring all our stuff home. I have no idea where it’s all going to go. The books in bookcases, but beyond that… We brought the teapots & teacups back already, and the hats, and a few other various bits of things… So much to go. Such a little house.

Mmmm. Yes. Definitely nap in order. And then everything else…