So, here I am, sitting in a hotel room in Los Angeles (a pretty nice hotel room, actually–I even have a sliding door to a patio with flowering plants of some sort), gearing up for a very busy two and a half days. The Welcome Reception at the Fowler was very nice. Interestingly, people didn’t seem to “mingle” much; that suits me fine, since, although I love meeting new people, I always feel weird hopping into others’ conversations, or out of conversations I’m in. (I’m shy in weird ways, I guess.) The sort of “find a group and chat with them for an hour” thing was actually pretty perfect, in that sense. I met fewer people, maybe, but I learned a lot more from the ones I did meet. <\/p>\n
From what I’ve seen so far, I’m even more psyched about this whole thing. It seems like a lot of the folks at this conference are newer to the electronic resources area, so there’s a general inquisitiveness, even on top of the standard librarian’s share. I think it’s going to be a great experience, and I’m really grateful to be here. <\/p>\n
It’s kind of lucky I could make it, I think: I had set aside enough time to finish my all of my school work early (except for Retrieving, but I’m not stressing that yet), and it was a tough schedule, but doable. Then I got some horrible cold-with-a-fever (flu?) over Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday, and I was knocked almost entirely out of commission. Unwisely, I still went to work on Friday, and I think that just made it worse. Luckily, though, by Sunday afternoon I was well enough to fly, if not entirely comfortably. (My fever and the worst of the other symptoms were gone, and enough time had passed that I was pretty certain I wouldn’t be making others sick by flying with them. I still have a cough and suspect I will when I get on the plane home, too; it’s more or less manageable, though.) <\/p>\n
And, hey, I made it. And then I did homework for most of the day, while listening to the rain. … Yes, it’s below 50 degrees and raining. I’ll take it, though–the greenery here is gorgeous! There weren’t nearly as many trees in Anaheim this summer, and they were more palmy, while these are all kinds of lovely deciduous, evergreen, and indeterminate (really!) trees. Also, I saw a hummingbird the size of a sparrow on the patio today, which thrilled me to no end (enough that I made an all-caps Twitter update, which is, you know, unheard of), and there was a hawk in front of the building. I walked around campus and just thought to myself “These kids don’t even know how good they have it, I bet. How lucky!” It’s such a pretty place. (Some of them, I’m not even kidding, had on winter coats for 50 degree weather. I smiled.)<\/p>\n
So, all around good stuff. I’ll try to update each day–we’ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, here I am, sitting in a hotel room in Los Angeles (a pretty nice hotel room, actually–I even have a sliding door to a patio with flowering plants of some sort), gearing up for a very busy two and a half days. The Welcome Reception at the Fowler was…<\/p>\n