I just found out today that the presentation I was working on for work will now have to be two separate presentations. I thought I was doing the same presentation twice, but not so. Now I have to come up with a second (huge, mondo, massive) presentation by next week. I also have to get my Samba done and finish up everything with “Full Swing” because I only submitted a partial and I have to get the whole thing finished, like now. I’m also going out of town for a few days and that cuts into my time even more.

Oh. God.

I think I’m hyperventilating. Quick! What does a panic attack feel like? I’ve never had one, but I think this is it!

I don’t know if I can do this because my boss just added some extra projects to my overloaded plate yesterday. Heeeeeelllllpppppp!!!

I just realized that I’ve only had 2 days off from work in the past 25. I’m starting to feel the drag of it. We are seriously understaffed at the library right now, so I’m working a lot of extra hours. Let me tell you, I started writing to avoid becoming a workaholic. The Mad Madam M can tell you I have serious OCD/workaholic tendencies. I’m totally becoming a zombie. I walk into a room and people ask me if I’m sick. Yeah. That’s not a blow to a girl’s ego. Not at all.

Must. Get. Rest.

I’m making excellent headway on my contemporary story, “Full Swing,” and I’m excited by how fast it’s coming along. This one is just pouring out of me. I hope my writing does it justice, but I’ll let my critique partner be the first judge (Be nice, Shawn! But not too nice! I don’t want to be like those sad people on American Idol who only think they can sing because their friends tell them they’re a rock star.)

Recap of my weekend in the sticks with Dixie Chick (she wanted a cool nickname, too. Everyone’s jealous of the Mad Madam M. Of course, I rose to the occasion.)

First, we (for some insane, inexplicable, incomprehensible reason) went to see the new teeny-bopper flick “Stick It.” My eyes are still burning folks! That was a really, really bad film. It wasn’t even so-bad-it-was-funny, either. It was a bad movie with a message. Hol-lee Jesus. Dixie Chick is still traumatized, whereas I have mostly deleted it from my memory banks. Will have it completely deleted by tomorrow, but I wanted to tell ya’ll about it. (Crap. Did I just say “ya’ll”? Get me out! They’re corrupting my native Valley Girl!)

Trip to visit Dixie Chick’s parental units went well. They are some funny people. Kinda disappointed with the local color though–maybe they all hid because it was raining? I only saw one toothless relative and one barefoot dude with no shirt. He didn’t even have a beer belly! Darn!

I did see what a holler looks like (FYI: in hick-speak a “holler” is a teensy crack in a mountain that people decided to settle in) and I saw the requisite off-road-4-wheeling-Jeep-vehicle that was artistically paint-gunned and spray-painted in strangely camo colors. Only they forgot the brown in the camo so it just looked like a weird green car with rabies.

I wish I could say I was going to be a good girl and write this weekend, but, alas, I cannot. I’m going to be very, very bad and take both Saturday and Sunday off from writing and just get the heck out of Dodge.

Saturday, I’m driving away from hickville and into the booming metropolis an hour away. *eye roll* It’s actually a very nice little city, but I’m feeling very snobbishly Californian today, so I’m peering down my nose at it–just because I can. Anyway, I’ll be seeing a movie with a friend–Akeelah and the Bee is what I think we agreed on, but whatever! As long as it’s not the horror flick she really wanted to see.

Her: How about An American Haunting?

Me: Please. Mama. No. I. Don’t. Wanna. (runs to cower in the corner, sucking thumb)

Her: Crystal, you Californians are weird ones.

Me: All part of the West Coast charm, I swear!

Sunday, I’m going deeper into hickville with the same friend. Apparently, I need to see some of the local color before I run screaming back to civilization like a wimpy little girl. I think it sounds like fun and my friend has instructed me on a few Californian-isms that I have to test out on her mom. She wants to be there to watch, of course. Yep, step right up to the new zoo exhibit, folks! It’s a rare Pacific Library Monkey–freshly captured from the wild.

My semester is finally winding down. I have to get all my grades in for my class tomorrow, so I’m pretty out of it today. Mild panic and hysteria reigns on campus as both the professors and the students frantically struggle to get everything done on time.

What amazes me is that I actually had a student call me and announce that she wasn’t going to do the final project because her life is crazy right now. Then she had the gall to get offended when I told her that she’d fail my class because she didn’t have enough point accumulated to blow off 30% of her grade and still pass. What shocks me is that I would never have had the moxie to tell one of my profs that in college. Seriously, never. And I had a rep in college for being the mouthy bitch. I’m not kidding…ask the Mad Madam M, she had to live through it with me.

For example, if we were bored in class, she looked to me to raise my hand and get the prof sidetracked on some wild tangent and then she would pinch hit to keep him or her going in the new (and un-note-worthy) direction. This also reduced the amount of information that could turn up on a mid-term or a final. Can’t test us on it if we didn’t have time to discuss it. Aw, shucks!

My favorite part was that we’d get extra bonus points for participation in class. Professors loved us! Sigh. Okay, the memory lane trip is over…back to work.

Thursday morning started out not so fabulous, I went to pick up the rental car I was supposed to drive to the conference, only to find out my boss had forgotten to file the paperwork and there was not rental car for me. Oh well, that just means they can pay me by the mile to drive my own car. A nice check is coming my way next payday.

I arrived at the conference site with no problems and stop for an early lunch at a little place in Abingdon, VA called the Marketplace Cafe where I had the most scrumptious panini–turkey, Brie, and thin-sliced Granny Smith apples. Yum.

I still managed to get to the conference early, where I found that I was booked to GO FREAKING FIRST!!! Luckily, there were two other presentation at the same time, so I figured that would cut down on my attendance. I was told at a conference this small, I should only have about 8-10 people show up to see me. Cool. Plus, going first meant some people would probably be running late and miss my presentation. PLUS, I wouldn’t have to compare what I intended to say to the other presentations I went to. (Can you tell I’m psyching myself up for this?)

Anyway, I set up for the presentation and then go next door to help another presenter set up for hers (muy complex equipment set-up). When I got back to room, there were 5 people waiting and I had about 10 minutes before kick-off time. Cool. 5 people is even better than 8-10. No problem.

Then a stream of people starts trickling in until I had about 15. So, I told them, “Alright guys, I was promised only 10 people, so you’ll have to work it out amongst yourselves who gets to stay.” At which point they all laughed at me and claimed to be from the same institution, so they only counted as one. Shyeah, right.

5 minutes to go-time and a mad flood of people comes in, grabbing chairs from the poor other lady’s presentation room in order to fit. By the time I started my presentation (“Hi, I’m Crystal and this is not only my first professional presentation, but my first conference ever. So, if I stutter or break into tears you know why.” More laughing at me ensues.) we have standing room only in my presentation AND MORE PEOPLE ARE COMING IN. When the site coordinator came into get a head-count, he couldn’t get in the door.

The presentation went really, really well! I had lots of questions at the end, everyone wanted a copy of my syllabus, and a bunch more were hoping to peek in on my actual class sometime. Woo-hoo! However, once I was done they wouldn’t leave. They just sat there and kept talking while the next guy was trying to set up for his. My little groupies kept asking more questions and congratulating me on a job well done. I even said “Okay, thanks everyone. We’re done now. Bye!” and they laughed again and stayed right where they were, blocking my escape route out the only damn door!

In all, good experience. Nice people. And they asked me to present again at the fall conference.

Here is my all-time favorite librarian t-shirt:

The definition of a librarian:

And a little something to make you laugh:

I give you a special quiz.

“Are you a library mofo?”

Yes, librarians do think of you this way if you do the things in this quiz. We may be nice, but we’re human. So you go from this:

To this:

So, today I’m at the conference and away from my computer (Egads! Say it ain’t so!) So, I’ve asked my lovely friend M to post this for me. Wish me luck on my presentation. I really, really hope I do well, but who knows? I could crash and burn and then I’ll be humiliated and have to cry. In which case you’ll never hear form me again because I’ll have thrown myself off a cliff to dramatically demonstrate the subtle cruelties of life as a librarian-cum-wannabe-author.

Yeah. So, anyway, I’ll see you Monday.

Today is the day for prepping for my presentation. I’m pretty nervous. This isn’t presenting in front of students, or even professors, this is a group of my peers. Only all of them have been librarians for way longer than I have. I’ll probably look like a moron, but then I ask myself “How bad could it be?” It’s a fairly short presentation and if I really screw the pooch, they can always write it off as newbie jitters, right? Right?

I leave you with this information literacy conundrum: What sort of systematic outcomes assessment method is most approriate for an online information literacy course without over-burdening faculty members with administrative responsibilty for the assessment itself?

See? And y’all thought I was dumb.