A Snapshot of NYC

Picture this: a trench coated woman on the crowded train trying to hold a bright red umbrella, a largish library book, and a pineapple. I hope that I added a bit of fun and mystery to everyone's train ride home. :) I'm smiling and smelling of tropical happiness.

Overdue

Wow. My last blog still had me packing things in Knoxville, Tennessee. I've lived in New York City for almost three months, and in my efforts to obtain gainful employment, I have walked these city streets to the point that I'm getting weird moments of deja vu. The Big Apple is shrinking as I slowly finish the map in my head.
I'm adjusting well to living with family. We've all got ways to find our alone time, and we've got enough in common that we have a lot of fun whatever we wind up doing together. Having cute, fluffy white dogs to distract us also helps. :)
It hasn't been a picnic with the economy going nuts just as I was trying to become a responsible adult, but them's the breaks. I haven't given up on my hopes of someday being the funky librarian who either has the information you need or has the tools to find it for you, (Or even teach you how to find it for yourself!), but while I wait for the libraries to unfreeze, I'm hunting part-time work in various places. Veterinarian clinics, jazz clubs, bakeries, bookstores, etc., I'm branching out into places that hadn't occurred to me before.
My heart wasn't as bruised as I thought. Getting some distance/perspective was good. I'm not pining away for anyone. I think a lot of those feelings were tied in to the fact that I was leaving a close friend behind as well as moving into an unknowable future. Spring arrived and brought the sunshine with it, so that too may explain my mood lift. :)
Here's hoping for a lovely spring, where hope and opportunity grow like the daffodils in Arkansas.

Moving Chronicles

I packed my collection of books today. A mixture of science fiction, swords & sorcery, and other whimsical titles are all neatly boxed up and awaiting the final layer of packing tape. I'm becoming an old hand at packing up my things and saying goodbye to friends. From home to dorm. From dorm to apartment. From apartment to graduate school. Now from grad school to the Big Apple. My uncle commented on our possible gypsy blood that calls on us to uproot every few years, and I can understand what he meant.
When I left Fayetteville, Arkansas, I promised friends that I'd return with my graduate degree to see them again. Their e-mails stopped about six months into my program. Now, it was a mutual growing apart as it is hard to keep ties when life takes you in different directions. (Happily, family and friends from other places keep popping into my life.) I was lucky in Fayetteville, that I hadn't met anyone (romantically) that could tie a string to my heart. This move, I'm a little less fortunate. I finally met someone, but while he has a firm grip on one of my heart strings, I am considered to be only a friend to him. I met the girl he started dating over New Year's and I wished them well. Argh.
New York will be my new challenge. I doubt that I will be looking for love anytime soon, but I'm told that when you're not looking, it sneaks up on you. We'll see. I'm going to be so busy trying to find work in a library, everything else will fall to the wayside. Or I might take up roller derby...whichever works best.

Adventures in New Yorker Land

Wow. A lot has changed since my last post. (Since I only update every few months, this is expected.) Still, here's the news. I'm moving to Brooklyn, New York to live in my sister and brother-in-law's spare bedroom.
How can this be happening? Economics. I got the degree, now I have to pay for it and with the hiring freeze that's happening in so many libraries, I'm sinking fast. My relatives have tossed me a line that will allow me to keep my head above water long enough for a) the hiring freeze to thaw or b) me to find another way for my degree to start paying for itself. This is a good chance for me, so I have to take it.
New York is a big, confusing place that reminds me that even though I have lived in a semi-large city like Knoxville, I haven't lived in a big city yet. This country girl is fighting hard not to feel intimidated. I move slower, talk slower, (I hope I don't think slower), and my fashion sense has been known to stray into tacky territory. New York has never been a place that I dreamed about living in. I think Seattle was my chosen territory for teen aged daydreams until I realized that I'm not fond of constant rain and that flannel rock had died with Kurt Cobain. Maybe the fact that I haven't daydreamed about New York will make its reality easier to take. Who knows?
I thought about ending this update with a list of all of the things I'm going to miss once I move to New York, but that's not the right attitude to take. Rather than be bittersweet, here's a list of things I will like about New York.

1. Food. You name it, they got it. You have to jump a train for an hour to get it, but it will be worth it.
2. Events. How many times have I wished to see a concert or attend a book signing only to hear that it happening only in the major cities like New York and L.A?
3. Surprises. (Hopefully the good kind.) There's always something unexpected around the bend.

I suspect that a lot of my frustrations and ponderings will filter out through this blog in upcoming weeks. Stay tuned.

Driving Ms. Butler

Whew! I drove down to Arkansas to spend a week running around with friends and family and I am happily exhausted! I swam in a saltwater pool, drank a heavenly peanut butter milkshake, watched an IMAX film, and drove all over the state of Arkansas. (I also ate from this bakery several days in a row!)
One of the most surreal moments was on the ride back to Tennessee when the road was suddenly overflowing with hurricane Gustav evacuees. I stopped for gasoline in Mississippi near the first main interstate where Louisiana folks come north, and the gas station resembled a refugee camp. Every pump was filled, children ran around in nightgowns, and family pets were being walked on every available inch of grass. I didn't get a sense of panic from anyone, just determination and and an electric feel of, "move 'em out," or "let's do this." It certainly made for an eventful drive home.
I got to see two of my closest high school friends on this visit. We piled into a car and drove to, The Purple Cow where we ate burgers, drank shakes, and talked until our jaws hurt. At moments, it was like no time had really passed. We were the same goofy kids from Parkers Chapel out on the town for a night. Then we'd take a picture and realize how much we all resemble our mothers and reality would return to make us laugh. Not bad.
I had a terrific time hanging out with my family. Dunking my brother in the pool, practising Spanish with my older sister on one of our many drives to Little Rock, viewing my little sister's apartment, eating Jorn's homemade bread, hugging my Mom ( world champion hugger!), and laughing with my Dad and stepmother about all sorts of things: These are the parts of the whole that made my visit so much fun. It will be a while before I stop dreaming of driving an endless highway, but it was totally worth it!

Cupcakes at Twenty Paces

There's another baker at my current job. We've only recently learned of one another and while we like and respect one another, there's a cupcake throw-down/cookie cage match/cheesecake bake off brewing. We've combined our powers of baking to create heavenly cookie dough ice cream for a recent party, but I think both of us are ready to meet at high noon with spatulas holstered at our hips.
It's so strange. As I write this, I'm smiling and semi-snarling at the same time. I'm sure that an onlooker would have a hard time figuring out if I was happy or criminally insane. I hadn't realized that I was so territorial about baking. My fellow baker recently wandered into my department and doled out brownies to my co-workers. My reaction? The next week I brought chocolate whoopie pies. (Basically two brownies with cream filling smooshed between them.) Take that, punk! I'm looking forward to the next step in our battle. There was talk of red velvet cupcakes. One cannot try to match such richness, but perhaps up the level of sophistication...Fresh cherry scones, anyone?

Time Passes

I've been meaning to post an update since March, but I kept putting it off for one reason or another. A lot has happened since my last post. My grandmother left this world in late March and, as I like to think of it, went to find my grandfather to see what he's been up to since they last were together. I finally earned my masters degree in Information Science, and have already had my first eight hour long interview for a librarian position. That interview turned out to be mere practice (much to my surprise), but now I'll know what to expect during the next one.
It has been two years since I've gone without a goal to achieve. I'm floating as I look for positions that I'm qualified for. It's kind of like summer vacation again. I've been hiking with friends, going to see movies, (Get Smart made my abs hurt from laughing and I'm so excited about Wall-E), and just relaxing. I'm re-polishing my resume and investigating leads on possible positions, but that doesn't take up all of my time the way school and interview preparation did. Work is good because I'm playing with all kinds of software like Garageband and Dreamweaver at one job, and catching up on the latest summer reads at the other.
Life is fluid at the moment. Things are changing from one minute to the next. I relatively unencumbered and can set up shop in a different town or state if I need to. It's scary and exhilarating all at the same time. I go from being petrified that I won't get a job in time to start making good on my loans to giddy that I might get to move to a new and exciting place to try to get the required job. Hopefully, my next post will show some progress from this state of things, but for now, I'm cool with it. :)