Grace in Defeat

I 'm listening to John McCain's concession speech. If this John McCain had been visible during the last months of the campaign instead of the John McCain we DID see, it would have been a closer race.

Daylight Saving Time

I've said it before and I'm saying it again. I'd vote for the candidate whose only promise was to end daylight saving time forever or end the electoral college, two concepts whose time is past.

WeEkenD UPdaTe

Well, I had a busy and rewarding weekend. I went into Billings Friday afternoon and had a delicious dinner with my dad at a dinner following a business meeting he attended. It was good food and good company, what else do you need? The next morning I had breakfast with aunt, uncle, cousins and two very friendly dogs. Then some shopping and a late lunch, more shopping and home again. Trips to Billngs tend to have a lot of family meals and shopping. I enjoy the family meals, but the shopping......not so much. It's just that living as far away from stores as we do, shopping in "big cities" is a neccessity, not a pleasure. I have gotten quite good at online shopping, but sometimes you just have to try something on, and as yet, they don't deliver cat food and toothpaste online. Maybe someday soon some one, somewhere will invent one of those replicator thingys like on Star Trek and I won't have to shop in Billings at all, just spend time with family!

Experiments in Telecomuting

This summer when gasoline prices starting spiraling upwards, those of us who commute to work started talking about ways to save gas$$$. One of the ideas was to continue working 4/10 hour days as we did in the summer. I liked the idea of 4/10 but the reality was that I was worn out on Friday and didn't get much done at all. The other idea was to stay home and to my work from there. After all one "data monkey cage" is much like another. It turns out that all I've done this week is data entry and fact checking for our state report called "fall count." All my programs are web-based so that's not an issue. Today was a perfect time to give it a try. It was actually not much difference for me. It was just as tiresome and boring as it was when I drive 25 miles to work. The difference was that I didn't have to shower if I didn't want to, (I didn't) and I could putz around a little before "going to work." When the quitting bell sounded. I could just log off my school program and start blogging. No 25 mile drive home with all the stops in town to get mail or milk. As far as I"m concerned I could stay home a couple of days a month and get as much done as I would at work and gain the above mentioned benefits. With winter approaching, another advantage would be to avoid the nasty, icy, slippery roads and the snow drifts that make my drive up the hill an "adventure in sliding." Of course I don't know if the people at work even noticed that I was gone. If not.....it may not be such a good thing.

Maverick

Did I hear right? A TEAM of Mavericks? What part of Maverick doesn't she understand? A Maverick is a LONE dissenter who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates. If you are in a group you can't, by definition, be a maverick. Who wants a Maverick in the White House anyway? I should think that we'd want a leader in the White House. Someone who is going to work with others to achieve a common destination, not someone who is going to go off on his own at cost of the rest of the us. Suppose the maverick values his "maverickness" so much that he appoints a lot of "mavericks" to his cabinet. He picked one as his "sidekick." What do we have then? A lot of people going their own way to prove that they are independent and refusing to work with any one, or a stampede to get to the head of the line to prove that he/she is a leader. No, I don't think we need a "maverick" in the Whitehouse. He is not going to convience me with that argument.

Banned Books Week.

It's Banned Books WeeK! Hurry, don't miss it! Read a book that was challenged or banned. Click on the title above for a list of books if you don't have a favorite banned book to read. Or just do a search for banned books, there are, unfortunately hundreds of banned books to choose from.

Can You Guess Where I'm From?

I found this link on the JWalk Blog. It's a game where a bunch of people from all over are speaking English with accents from there own country. Not all of the countries are English speaking countries though. I got 21 measly points. What's your score?


http://www.languagetrainersgroup.com/accent_game.html

Take 2

Meet Trixie

Meet Trixie, a data monkey like me. She was put together this week and accessorized today. She has the requisite two hands for typing and cutting/pasting from one database or spreadsheet to another. Like me she has highlights in her hair and is addicted to costume jewelry. She is going to join me in the office tomorrow to remind me how to have fun at work.

Self Portrait

How many times has this happened to you, ladies? You go to the salon and spend a few hours getting a new hair doo and then the next day, you cannot make it look like it did when you walked out of the salon?

Vacation Day?

I had yesterday off, but I'm not sure it was a vacation day or a medical leave. I guess it was both. I had to go to the dentist yesterday to get an impression made so I can get a removeable appliance to keep me from clenching my teeth together in my sleep. It's gotten so bad my ears buzz and wake me up. Anyway the procedure at the dentist made me gag horribly so I needed the rest of the day to decompress.

I had an early lunch with a good friend of mine and we talked about other old freinds, not gossip, I swear, just catching up. We talked about politics and agreed on just about everything so that wasn't a long conversation. Then I went to my hair appointment to get a "new doo" , but no one has noticed yet, so I could have saved my $$$$, but then it does feel better to me, so I guess it was worth it. Not much of a vacation, but it was a break from the routine.

Are You Being Served?

We're EVIDENTLY NOT being served. Let me explain. At our school we have used a database program designed for schools. It lets us store all kinds of data about our staff and students. It also lets us schedule classes and take attendance. It keeps a grade book that does all the calculations and comes out with a grade. It's WONDERFUL... when it works. When it doesn't. . . it's less than NOT wonderful.
Our state has begun implementing a new SIS (Student Information System) for state reports. We could just export our data to them or we could purchase the district verson of their program and the exports would happen "automatically." Since our old system was being phased out at the end of this year, our district decided to go with the same system the state uses so we could "synchronize" with their server and automatically export our data for state reports. It sounds great on paper. But when we finally got converted to the new system, they converted us to a version of the program newer than the version the state uses. Newer is better, right? NO it's not better, it's worse. The newer version won't synchronize with the older version and we had no way to assign state ID numbers to our new students. Bummer!
Well, after a couple of days of panic to get the new students enrolled, scheduled, graded and attendended, we got a "walk around" to fix it temporarily until we could sync. We spent Friday in a marathon work session entering in new data. Whew!!

Then Friday afternoon, somewhere in Minnesota. . . a server crashed. Guess whose server it was? Good guess. It was our server and we're back to where we were a week ago. I hope it's not longer than a week ago. I can't contact anyone until Monday to know for sure. I'm just hoping that we've already had our share of bad luck for the year.

If you're wondering why I should care about any of this it's because as of last spring I'm the head "data monkey."

Lucky, lucky me.

New chairs for old!

I remember blogging a looooooong time ago about wanting a new sofa. Well a few weeks ago, after a delay or two, it finally got delivered. When they delivered this they took away our old sofa and an old recliner chair that was looking a little worse for the wear and tear. Now we have a much less cluttered living room. We don't have a sleeper sofa any more, but we've plenty of room for one of those inflatable beds.



That's my new philosophy, if I'm replacing something then I have to get rid of the old something I'm replacing or I really don't need the new someting after all. That goes for sofas, shoes, books, and tires, but never people. You can't replace old friends or family for new. You can never have enough of either.

DATA MONKEY

From the Urban Dictionary

2.data monkey
22 up, 1 down
An employee whos job it is to take data from one source (eg SQL Server) and stick it in another source. A bit like a DBA (Database Administrator) but without the job prospects.
"Hey Jim, do you have that Excel spreadsheet yet?" "No Ann, the Data Monkey has only had the jobsheet for 6 days, I'll have it for Christmas...I think."

I thought I had invented the name Data Monkey to describe my new job. But when I Googled it to make sure it didn't mean something different, I found my job description. Who knew? I must have seen it somewhere and it just stuck in the back of my head until it leaped out one day when some student asked my what I did if I wasn't the librarian anymore. "I'm a Data Monkey!"

Belle Weather

As I was driving home after work I saw the most beautiful clouds ahead of me. The closer I got to home the more of the lower clouds I could see. About 30 minutes after I got home we had some hail, later measured at approx. 1" in diameter. So of course I had to take some pictures.

Christmas in July

Hubby got a new camera last weekend and has been taking pictures of our local flora and fauna(fauna to follow). This reminds me of Christmas because of the bright red berries. I've never seen so many berries on the bushes, but we've never had such a mild, rainy spring before either. It's called a Skunk Bush, also a Fragrant Sumac, Lemon Sumac, Polecat Bush, Rhus trilobata, take your pick. You'll probably be seeing the picture again in late December along with wishes for a Merry Christmas.

It Works Again

I changed a setting in our browser's security setting and it works now. Not sure if it was something I did or a coincidence. Thanks.

Now I can't think of anything to write.

This coming Friday is the last day of my online summer school class. It's getting harder and harder to complete the assignments. The assignments are harder, my attention is wandering to stuff at my new job and because it's summer and I'm usually doing some heavy duty housecleaning this time of year and it's not getting done and there are video games not being played and books not being read.

Anyhoo, I'm sure glad I aced the easy stuff cause I ain't acing anything now. Just counting down the days 'til "School's OUT for SUMMER!"

Top 100 Books

Stole this right off of Philipa's blog.

What books have you read? Bold the ones you have read, italicize the ones you are planning on reading and underline the ones you loved: Some of the children's books I read over the summer when I worked with the Missoula Library Summer Bookmobile program. The quality of the books is part of why I became a chilren's librarian. Other of the children's books I read to my son when he was little. I think he enjoyed most of them or at least knew that a good book would delay bedtime!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen –
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Read 1 1/2 of the books. Does that count?
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Read many, many times.
6. The Bible -Bits and pieces, but not the whole thing.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell-
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -Loved the first two of the series. I was reading these when everyone else was reading Harry Potter.
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Of course!
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy –
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller- Don't remember too much. Read it in college.
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare – Most of them anyway.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier – I think so. Read some of her books, probably read this one.
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien – Read aloud to my young son. Probably to delay bedtime.
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks –
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger –
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot –
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Hated the movie!
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Read recently to teach to high school students. Yuck, didn't waste their time.
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens- Read in college. Remember that at the end of one chapter the heroine was blinded and the next time we read about her, a few chapters later, she was sighted and no mention was made of her blindness. I figured that it was a serialized novel and he just forgot because he had to make a deadline.
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy- I remember being confused by all the names. Everyone had 4 or 5 names. Yesh!
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams – LOL
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy-.
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen Probably. I never cared for Austen, but my English teacher assured me the author was great so a read a bunch of them to see if I could figure out why. Never did.
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini-
37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres –
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden-
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne-
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - Terrific Victorian Mystery
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding-
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen-
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley-
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez-
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck-
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Tried to read several times. Never could.
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath-
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt -
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker-
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - REad the complete collection while in junior high.
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute-
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
99. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain - I taught this to 8th graders.

Sailing in a sea of grass

So at the beginning of spring, late Friday afternoon, a guy drives down our road towing a boat. He parks it in the field across from our house and leaves it. The next weekend it's the same thing and the following weekend it's an old truck. It seems a guy who lives in Billings owns the lot and just figured it would be a good place to park his junk. I'm guessing it's junk because he's never been out to get the boats to take them to a lake or resevoir. Of course he's not allowed to park junk on the streets of Billings. They have laws against doing things like that. But those of us out here in the country don't mind at all, do we? Just bring your old dogs, cats, kids , trucks, anything that doesn't fit in a city will look better and act better in the country, right? Of course if he'd take care of his property and mow the grass to keep it from drying out and becoming a fire hazard, it wouldn't look like they were floating in a sea of grass. Isn't that nice?

Week End Visit

I had a great visit in Billings this weekend. I arrived just in time to get to visit with cousins who were also visiting dad and bro and then spent a relaxing day that ended in a father / daughter dinner. Sunday morning I got the pleasure of going to church with dad and bro and getting to hear a sermon delivered by said dad. I remember being a little kid and seeing my dad in the pulpit. It made me feel kinda special. It still does. After church I finished up some shopping and enjoyed a grilled salmon steak and some homemade pasta salad and yummy salsa.


The Wimbleton tennis finals were on TV and was called to a halt because of rain. I jokingly said I'd better hit the road before I ran into a storm myself. I shoulda left sooner. I drove into a horrible storm complete with hail and blinding sheets of rain. The hill on the way home was a stream of red water as it poured down and washed the dirt away. I made it home safely and it continued to rain for 2 more hours. 2 inches of rain in less than 3 hours. Anywhere else and we'd have a flood, but in SE Montana, where 2 inches of rain in a season is a lot, it just soaked up the water and the next day was bright and green again.

If it means anything to you at all, you know who won the tennis match. If it doesn't, why should I tell you?