What have I done!?

I have done SOMETHING to my lower back, and I don't know what I did but I wish I hadn't done it. I can't really twist or bend. Almost had to get husband to help me put on my socks this morning. It's feeling a hair better than it did last night but I am trying to baby it, so no long walk for me today, and no karate. No high kicks, no heavy lifting. Oy. Hope it gets better soon!

In other, unrelated news, I went to the animal shelter yesterday. Why do I do this? Met some adorable kittens that I wish I could take home, and fell in love with a beautiful pitbull named Beatrice. She had big ears that stick straight up, Staffordshire style. She was a cutie. Very sweet. It breaks my heart to have to leave the shelter without taking anyone with me, but I have to think about the amazingly good dynamic we have at home with our dog and cat. Bringing someone else into the fold might change that or bring out some bad behaviors, so I gotta stick with what I've got.

One last little tidbit: I discovered a totally adorable website: http://www.ZooBorns.com. It's got tons of cute newborn zoo animals. You know, if you're into that kind of thing. :)

And that's all the news there is, so I guess life is pretty good! :)

Dumb Reasons to do Good Things

I was shopping today and I saw (and always seem to see!) such pretty clothes, including many pretty dresses. Now, I am not a girly girl (don't listen to me husband- he thinks I am girly because I have more than 1 pair of shoes!), but I really wish I could pull off the dressy look. I wouldn't even wear them to work or to church, or even really where anyone could see me. But it made me think: what's stopping me? My weight. Yes, my weight which was going up and up and up and out of control. Well I am turning it around. I am slowly, but surely, going to lower my gosh-darned weight and then I am going to buy a pretty dress and I am going to wear it at home and twirl around in it and maybe pretend my Dr. Pepper is tea and I will sip it while eating biscuits (cookies!). And then I'm going to talk in a British accent to my cat AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME SO THERE!!!! So let's hear it for dumb reasons to do good things! *cheers*

Strategic Planning

Had a neat experience today. Our entire library staff went off-site for a meeting from 8am til noon to discuss our strategic plan with a man from our company that takes an interest in those sorts of things. His goal, and our goal really, was to get the entire staff to work together on creating a vision and plan that we could use to help us with our annual performance reviews. It was kind of interesting and I liked his idea of how to begin: imagine going 10 years into the future and then coming into our library and seeing how it would look if it were wildly successful. Would a wildly successful corporate or government library look like in 10 years? Are there any print materials? What are the users like? How are we helping them? What technologies exist? It's a fun brainstorming experience. By exploring where we want to be in the long run, we can create the first few babysteps of things we want to accomplish in the next year or two to set us on our path.
Of course, as expected, not everyone participated. We knew that some people are just burned out on performance management. Some people are 'short timers' and plan to retire in 5 years or so. What was their 10 year vision? Coming into work with a visitor badge! But almost everyone participated and I think we got a lot of the meeting. Kudos to Matt Sieger for leading the talk. There was some great food to be had, as well! ;)
The depressing part of the talk was that the more we imagined outselves being as successful as possible, the less librarians are needed. Automation, improved databases, natural language searching that actually works, fully digitized collections.... I told my boss that it's much like how a doctor's dream is for there to be no injury or illness-- he'll wish himself out of a job! Much in the same way we are thinking ourselves out of work. My only consolation is that technology doesn't move quite fast enough, and business sensibilities lag even farther behind. Maybe I can squeeze a 30 year career out of traditional or transitional librarianship afterall. :D

Cheesecake and other randomness

I've got a hankering for cheesecake and I dunno what I'm gonna do about it.

Hubby and I have been watching the Game of Thrones series with friends. It is awesome so far. Several friends have been telling me for a couple years that I need to read the series, and now I see that they are probably right. Where will I find the time?

I am still working on reading "Bored of the Rings" and have 2 other loaners I need to read after that. Then I bought a Bill Bryson book off Amazon because my brother read me some passages and it was hilarious, so I've got that to look forward to, too!

I've also added several childrens books to my wishlist on Amazon. I guess hubby is really starting to wear me down with talk of having a kid someday soon. I really need him to get out of school and have a job first, though. :/

Life is so good. Great family, great friends. I'm not yet where I want to be in 2 major life categories: finances and fitness, but if the rest of my life is pretty well sorted out, I guess I don't have too much to complain about! And at least I am taking steps to turn the F's around. How am I going to reconcile posting about fitness and cheesecake in the same blog entry? How will I ever self-actualize at this rate!? ;)

Casey Anthony

I've been following the Casey Anthony trial a little bit, and saw that the jury just released a 'not guilty' verdict a little bit ago. I really don't know whether Casey was guilty of murder or not, but I find myself having really mixed feelings about the verdict for some reason. I am glad that this rules out any possibility of the death penalty for Casey, but at the same time, it doesn't bring back the little girl that died. One of the researchers from the lab where I work has been in the news with regard to the case because of some new forensics tools he has helped develop. The tools showed that there was a body in Casey's car. Does a not guilty verdict take credence away from this researcher's work? And what about Casey's parents? Her parents supported her through this whole ordeal, and then the defense team accused Casey's dad of treating her inappropriately/sexually abusing her as a child. How could you support your family member after they accused you of such a thing? There are a lot of complex issues at work here and I'm just not sure how I feel about it all.

Well let's think of something more cheerful, eh? Hubby and a friends and I went to a restaurant on Hardin Valley Rd (close to Pellissippi State Comm. Coll.) called Double Dogs. It was good. Not too terribly expensive. I got a chili dog and fries, and it was in the $6-$7 range. Great food, decent serving size. The fries were delicious. The hot dog was actually a little larger than what I usually like, but it was a Hebrew National dog so it didn't gross me out as much as your run of the mill mixed meat mystery dogs. I would definitely like to go back here again. Maybe during football season since there's TVs all over the place!
Lastly I'll mention that I went back to Noodles & Company twice during the past week. I still really like it! I've ordered the same thing every time I've been (I think I've been 5 or 6 times now): the Penne Rosa, no meat, no mushrooms, with parmesan cheese (you have a choice between parmesan or feta). It's super good. I highly recommend it!